With Hillary Clinton running for president, it is hard to keep separate legitimate questions about whether her unorthodox email practices while secretary of state compromised national security from the partisan mud-slinging that comes with a political campaign.

Likewise, as the likely Democratic standard-bearer and former cabinet officer in the Obama administration, it is a stretch to assume the Justice Department will do a vigorous and impartial investigation into the email controversy and be entirely forthcoming with the results.

For the sake of everyone’s credibility, a special prosecutor should be appointed with the tools to quickly answer the questions before the presidential primaries begin.

That’s not a lot of time. The urgency of getting to the bottom of this argues for the tools a special prosecutor can bring to a probe.

Despite Clinton’s insistence that she did nothing out of the ordinary, a federal judge ruled in a Freedom of Information Act case Friday that she had violated government policy by storing official messages on a private server. He ordered the State Department to work with the FBI, which is probing whether national security has been compromised.

An investigation should include the deposing of Clinton,who has been caught in one deception after another in trying to explain away the private email account over the past several months.

Her lack of veracity mandates that she be placed under oath and asked the questions any other government official would be asked in a similar situation. Her standing as a presidential candidate should afford her no special privileges.

As much as Clinton tries to dismiss this as a politically-driven attack, the facts and her own actions suggest otherwise. (my emphasis)